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Weak Ericofon Receiver

Started by LarryInMichigan, June 14, 2014, 11:59:28 PM

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LarryInMichigan

I received this "Royal Dubonnet" Ericofon: ebay link today.  According to Richard Rose, this is one of the rarest colors, and I don't believe that I have ever seen one before.  This one was made in the 20th week of 1959.  The plastic shell is in decent condition, but unfortunately, the receiver is very weak, too weak to be useful.  I tried poking it with a paper clip, sucking on it with a vacuum cleaner, and pulling on it with a strong magnet, but nothing improved it.  Cutting out the cover to access the transmitter element looks like it will be nearly impossible without seriously breaking the plastic.  Does anyone here have any suggestions on how to fix this?

Thank You

Larry

HarrySmith

If it was mine I would just display it as is!  I would not want to chance damaging such a nice looking, hard to find phone!

Just my opinion, your mileage may vary.
Harry Smith
ATCA 4434
TCI

"There is no try,
there is only
do or do not"

fastmacuk

Hi Larry,

It is possible to 'pop' off the receiver cover from the Ericofon shell  - its a scary thing to do but I have attempted it several times now with complete success.  Richard Rose describes the process here:

http://www.ericofon.com/work/recrep.htm

Kind regards,

David

UK

TelePlay

That is one heart stopping, death defying procedure.

Only question I have is why use 2 part epoxy to put it back together? What if you have to take it apart again?

LarryInMichigan

#4
Quote from: fastmacuk on December 06, 2014, 05:22:34 AM
Hi Larry,

It is possible to 'pop' off the receiver cover from the Ericofon shell  - its a scary thing to do but I have attempted it several times now with complete success.  Richard Rose describes the process here:

http://www.ericofon.com/work/recrep.htm

Kind regards,

David

UK


That is much more difficult than it sounds.  I already badly damaged a rare color shell trying to do that.

Larry

TelePlay

Larry,

Did you try testing the receiver by connecting it to a similar working phone with jumper wires to see if it really is the receiver element causing the problem?

LarryInMichigan

Quote from: TelePlay on December 07, 2014, 01:38:41 AM
Larry,

Did you try testing the receiver by connecting it to a similar working phone with jumper wires to see if it really is the receiver element causing the problem?

Yes, I did.

ericofonfixer

I've done a number of rare color receiver replacements for people and I haven't lost one yet. It just takes a very slow hand and knowledge of how deep to go in the right spots to get the catch tabs cut free. If you haven't tackled this yet, I can take care of it for you. I still won't make any guarantee of success since this is a rather unorthodox approach at repair. I have original used receivers I can replace the bad one with.
I also have a way of restoring low volume receivers that's usually successful. I don't want to publish the process in a public forum because it's maniacally dangerous and I don't want to be responsible for any funerals. This process works about 60% of the time without having to do any surgery on the phone. I always try this before cracking the phone open.

Richard Rose

Doug Rose

Richard.....From one Rose to another....Welcome to the Forum.....Doug
Kidphone

Spanish_phones

Hi there!

It's been definitely so long since the last time I participated on the forum... I' so sorry about taht.

Now I started again restoring old phone. Unffortunately, I bought an ericofon that suffers from low volume receiver...

I hope it would be a circuit problem, since the dial is neither working properly.

Nevertheless, I wonder which is the recovery process Richard Rose, aka Ericofonfixer, developed. And since his last participation here was four years ago... Does anyone know what it was about?

I'm hlad to be here back again, and thak you so much,

Ignacio

LarryInMichigan

One thing which has worked for me on some phones is holding a magnet in front of the receiver to pull the diaphragm outward a bit.  If the diaphragm is pulled too far, the receiver might end up worse than it was before.

Larry

Spanish_phones

Hi again,

Firstly, I want to thanks you Larry for the idea, I have some neodimuim strong magnets that could help.

Secondly, unffortunately I wired another receiver and it sounds much higher, so the positive point is that the telephone circuit is OK.

I will try the magnet and see if ther is an upgrade with the sound.

I thought that connecting a condenser or an electric resistance may increase the electric current, thus improving the volume.

Regards,

Ignacio

Spanish_phones

Bay the way, I meassured the receiver impedance, 82 ohm.

(Receiver impedance for a spanish old phone, Heraldo, is 20 ohm)

dsk

I have changed 2 receivers, pretty tricky to open them the right way.
Read this: https://www.ericofon.com/work/recrep.htm

You may use acetone as glue...

dsk

andy1702

Ericofon receivers are a real pain. Why they couldn't make that face plate a clip fit or even put a screw in it somewhere is beyond me. Maybe they did it deliberately to make them disposable?

The question is what's actually in there to go wrong? It's just a small speaker, so all there should be is a diaphram, magnet and coil. If you can find out what the resistance value of a good coil should be then you can at least test that part before resorting to digging it out of the case.

As a side note to the Ericofon, hands up anyone who has inadvertantly cut a caller off just by putting the phone on the table for a second? ;D
Call me on C*net 0246 81 290 from the UK
or (+44) 246 81 290 from the rest of the world.

For telephone videos search Andys Shed on Youtube.